Re-Editing

Re-Editing

Editing was once again a very smooth process as I had very little to do after the previous re-editing. The first thing I have changed is the studio name. It has been on my mind for a while that "Big Bang Studios" does not sound like a proper company, so, I have changed it to "Platinum Studios". In my mind, this sounds like a more professional name and is a slight tribute to the creators of one of my favourite video games (Bayonetta), 'Platinum Games'.

As can be seen above, here is the final edit together of the running sequence. At present, the audio is incomplete, but, that is one of the things that is currently on my list. Overall, the clips fitted alsmost perfectly to the original version so I basically had to slot the new clips over the old ones.

After slotting in all of the shots it was necessary to figure out how I was going to make the footage look like it took place at night. In the first draft I had used the Night preset on the Colour Curves and toyed with the brightness and contrast settings but this still did not have the effect hat I wanted. Before this stage in the re-editing I had attempted to use Adobe After Effects to do the Day for Night but it simply did not work. Then I had the idea of using the Night preset twice on each clip and to my surprise it worked perfectly. Now, the footage really looks like it takes place during the middle of the night rather than at dusk but it is still perfectly visible and most of the important details are very clear. This is a very simple, but very effective fix that has drastically improved the quality of my Thriller and makes it appear far more ominous than it initially had.

The final thing to sort out before the audio editing is the one shot that caused a slight change to my timeline. In the first draft, the shot of Katie stopping and turning around was much shorter than the re-shot version. All attempts at cutting the new clip to fit with the old one did not work, so, I cut the timing of the final two shots down greatly and this offsetted the problem. The fast paced editing of the final two shots brings them close to the gun shot sound effect and it really adds to the climax of the sequence.

Not a lot was changed with the audio. I did attempt to have the second line re-dubbed but when it came to editing this line it simply did not fit nicely into the film. It sounded too much as if the line had been re-dubbed and so I left the original line in the edit. I also attempted to fix the footsteps sound effect but this also ended up being a pointless endeavour.

One issue was that my Thriller was far too dark after the new technique. After trying multiple different techniques to increase the brightness I stumbled upon the Levels tool. This allowed me to increase the Gamma on my film and I am glad to say that this fixed my problem with the darkness. While it may still be too dark, there is nothing that I can do to fully fix the problem as I have neither the equipment nor the skills to be able to fix it. 

Another issue that was brought to my attention during this stage was that the font was not particularly fitting for my Thriller. The intial font was deemed to be too bold and lacked the style that my Thriller exudes. After a bit of searching I came across this font: "Ringbearer" by Pete Klassen. While the font is stylised to look like the one used in the Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003) movies I believe that it perfectly fits my Thriller. It is slim, suave and has a certain style to it that really adds to the nature of my Thriller.

Re-Filming

I am in the final stretches of the project now and it is very important that I get everything done quickly and efficiently whilst also keeping my project at its highest possible quality.

Re-Filming
The filming on Tuesday went almost as planned, I was able to get about half of the necessary shots in the first half hour of shooting. One change that was made was Katie's costume, she now has her hair down and is wearing a blue scarf, this really does not affect the project as I was going to have to re-shoot the entire sequence anyway due to the positions of the cars on the road.  At the end of the first half an hour the worst possible thing happened, the heavens opened and we were struck by what appeared to be a tropical downpour. Thankfully we sheltered ourselves in Katie's doorway and because there was no possible way that we could continue filming I cancelled the rest of the shoot for the moment and I went home. About 20 minutes later, the rain ceased and I decided to continue filming in the vain hope that everything would stay perfectly fine for the final takes. Thankfully it did and I was able to get all of the remaining shots done. All of the shots that I knew were wrong in the first version were now fixed and I was incredibly relieved to be done. Unfortunately, I am now not too sure about the running part of the sequence, but, at this point I do not have time to worry and I will have to make do. Those shots should not be nearly as bad as the problem shots in the first version and for that I am thankful.

During filming I did try to address one suggestion received during the feedback, specifically to include more shots during the running. I tried this, but it proved incredibly difficult and a major hassle so I simply decided to leave that suggestion be and get on with the rest of the filming.

Re-Filming Schedule and Call Sheet

Re-Filming Shoot
Date for Filming: 29th March 2011 between 6:00pm and 7:00pm
Location: Darley Avenue, Toton
Scene to be filmed: Lynette James' Murder
Shot order: I will try to record things in chronological order to make things simpler when it comes to editing.
Back Up Plan: If it starts to rain or it gets to dark I will postpone until the 30th March 2011.

Call Sheet for 29th March 2011
Actors Needed:
Katie Hutchinson
Martin Smith
Equipment Needed:
Panasonic Lumix TZ10 Camera
Tripod
Props Needed:
None

Re-Editing the Thriller

Before the now almost necessary re-film I felt that it was necessary to re-edit what I currently had to make it easier to slot in the re-filmed segment.

The first things I dealt with were the black spaces that appeared in two different sections. This was a very simple fix and it only needed a slight movement of the clip and a slight lengthening at the end to fill out the necessary space.

Next I dealt with the moon sequence. After a couple of different approaches to fixing it, one of them being using a still frame from the footage instead, I finally came to a decision on how to fix the sequence. This required only the first clip of the Moon and then I utilised Pan/Crop to put the frame as it was in the other shot.

Then on the clip that joined the two versions together I used keyframes to change from the first Pan/Crop position to the second. In the end this was a very simple fix but it looks incredibly effective and it is practically unnoticeable that the same clip is used. It also addresses one of the points made during an Audience Feedback session from which I gleamed no amazing information. This point was to not have the credits touching the moon and in using this technique the credits no longer touch the moon. This saves me a lot of hassle in attempting to move the credits.

The next thing that needed addressing was the audio of the car sequence. In the draft edit the background noise was all too noticeable. To remove this I muted the sound on almost all of the clips where the ambient sound could not be heard and then copied the clips were audio was paramount. I imported these into Audacity and then used the Noise Removal feature to remove the noise.

This is achieved  by selecting a section of noise and choosing "Get Noise Profile". Then the entire clip needs to be selected and on the Noise Removal feature all that is needed is to choose "Ok" and then all of the noise in the clip is removed. This was also used even further on the running sequence audio to get rid of the wind.

This is all that has been fixed at present and the rest will be sorted after re-filming.

Audience Evaluation

After the creation of my first draft I felt that it was necessary to ask an audience what they felt about the film, as well as asking my teacher his opinion.

Mr Richard Turner (My AS Media Teacher) gave this response:

"An excellent first draft, wonderfully planned & very well executed, great music, shots & titles.

I agree with your suggestions for improvement on your blog.

Other suggestions: all moon shots should be rock-steady unless it is a p-of-v shot? Why is Katie standing in the road? Should there be CUs of Katie’s face when she is running to show fear/tension etc? Do we need a badge/gun something that identifies Sophie as police or PI? Can we read the notes on her car seat (do you want us to)?"

In response to the suggestions I believe that:

• The moon shots should not be perfectly steady purely because it is a point of view shot to some degree as the audience does see Lynette James standing in the middle of the road looking up at the moon.
• The reason that the character of Lynette James is standing in the road is something that would be explained at a later point in the film as it would link into how Midnight murders his victims.
• During the running sequence I did try to get a shot of Katie's face and I believe I marginally succeeded in this. However, I do not think that I need to put extra close ups into the sequence as that would require a definite re-film and would be hellish to edit together with the continuity I have now.
• Sophie's character is in fact a journalism graduate, although, at this point in the film it is not necessary to know her occupation. It is only necessary to know that the character is investigating the case.
• When the video is of a high enough quality the notes on the character's car seat are readable and I would like the audience to be able to read them, however, they are not that important as the key information is revealed subtly throughout the rest of the sequence.

James Thompstone (A fellow AS Media Student) stated:

"Watching Richards film he has a very good use of sound, the music to the film is very appropriate for the story line and does not overpower the film’s sound effects or the visual. His title sequence is very effective and introduces the main point of the film without ruining any story line. His use of camera angles and straight edits give it a very edgy feel and build in suspense. If  I was to criticise the film in one way it would be the shaky camera for filming the moon on the title sequence however I understand the difficulty of doing this. My second point to improve would be to make the investigator look a bit more professional in the car and some sort of way to introduce who she is and what she is trying to achieve which does become more clear towards the end of the clip."

I accept these criticisms readily and I am able to fix one of them easily. The second point is harder to fix as I cannot re-shoot that scene due to the location. However, as previously mentioned, the character's occupation is not important at the time of the opening sequence and it is something that would be developed in the 10 minutes after the opening sequence.

Zoe Cumberpatch (A fellow student who is not studying Media) gave this feedback:

"First of all wow!

I think the music was great and really suited the mood, I would however suggest a slightly different piece of music when it changes to the scene with your sister in. Maybe a few more sound effects to add drama and tension.

I loved the lighting and variation of shots, they were really effective, overall I can't find anything that drastically needs changing, the moon shots at the beginning are quite blurred and unstable, and I think the credits last a tiny bit too long compared to the length of the opening. "

I am incredibly pleased that Zoe really liked my Thriller and I'm glad that she said that nothing drastically needed changing it was just the Moon shots and maybe the length of the credits. The suggestion about the music will definitely be too difficult to carry out as the artist, James Cooper, is in his final year at the University of Glamorgan like my sister and he will be incredibly busy at present with his work. Ergo, I think I will stick with the music I have because it is still perfectly effective and I do not want to make James do anymore work than he already has. I also do not think that I will shorten the credits purely because I have to include so many names that in relation to what would be the rest of the film the 30 seconds would seem largely inconsequential.

Sophie Kish (Actress in the piece and final year Media and Performance student at the University of Glamorgan) said:

"Shaky Moon at 26seconds, needs to be stabled!

POP when Martin steps into frame - need to sort that out, dub the sound with a stock sound of a foot. Love the effect to make it look like night =)! Try it a little bit darker, still a little bit too light..... more close ups! 

You need more footage of running I think, make it look like she is panicking more.... dunno if you should borrow a skateboard, orrrrrrrr  get dad to drive up the street and film with the window open in the back of the car??? obviously replace the sound! 

Then there is me..... LMAO! URGH!!!!!!!!!!!! I think you need to try and tidy up that last sequence a little bit.. it's not as quick and DUH DUH DUUUUHHHHH as it should be.... hmm.... not really sure what I could suggest with that though...."

From this Sophie has brought up a lot of things that I have already noted as needing to be fixed. I am not going to fix the "pop" when Martin steps into the frame purely because that is a foot step and it does sound like a foot step. With the sound effects in the running I think that I might just be able to get rid of the final traces of the wind with a bit more editing. With the suggestion of getting more footage for the running, I also think that I might ignore that purely because I do not have the time to include more footage within the opening and making sure everything was continuous would suddenly become incredibly tedious and wasteful.

After all of this feedback I think that I have a slightly more focused idea of what I need to improve in my Thriller and hopefully this will make my final edit so much more successful.

'Midnight' First Edit

This is the first edit of my opening sequence for my fictional film 'Midnight'. At present, I feel that there are a number of issues with it that I need to sort out for the final draft deadline and this may require some re-filming but I believe it will only be three specific shots that I will need to do.

The first problem is the second shot of the moon. I personally think that the moon is far too jittery for that section. Luckily this is easily fixed by cutting the clip so I have a still moon and then repeating that footage for the necessary time without it being too noticeabale.

The second problem is during the tilt down. When the tilt reaches the bottom I made an edit so that it did not return up as it looked like a messy movement, however, in editing it there I have inadvertantly made the cut more obvious. If I am to re-film anything this will be one of the key shots.

Another issue is the gap between clips that appears at roughly 0:50 and 1:57. These will be easy to fix as it will just require a little bit of zooming into to make the joins between the clips more seamless.

I might also re-shoot the last two shots of the running sequence purely because the actress does not look quite as scared as I would like. It is not a major problem and if I can get away with not re-shooting then I won't, but these two shots will definitely be re-done if I re-shoot.

In almost all of the clips in the car I need to do some more audio editing, removing the noise that is clearly apparent in all of them and ruining the atmosphere that I want to create. This will be as simple as the previous audio editing so it should not be a problem.

Despite these issues I still need to continue to mess around with the colour curves, brightness and contrast settings and then edit the running sequence on Adobe After Effects to try and make it seem even more like night than it already is because to me it still looks too early to be midnight.

Overall, I am still incredibly happy with the first draft of my film and I believe that all of the problems I have pointed out are simply ways for me to make my Thriller as perfect as I can make it. In doing this, I have allowed myself to focus my effort on certain specific areas so that I am not wasting my time on the sections that I think are fine. This will make my final edits much more efficient and I am glad that I have taken this evaluative step.

The Soundtrack of the Thriller

Audio is one of the most important parts of a film as it creates the atmosphere and creates the representation of the characters and the situation in which they find themselves.

For most of the opening the footage is muted. This is because I did not need those audio clips at all. The shots of the moon were silent anyway, but then with the tilt and some of the other shots my voice can be heard giving directions and this led to me muting those particular sections. The running footage and the final line in the opening are also muted as these particular clips had audio editing that required me to save them to a separate file.

The image above shows the rest of the audio clips in my Thriller. On the top, the edited audio for the running sequence can be seen, as can the gun shot and the edited audio for the final line. On the bottom is the music I am using for my Thriller.

To edit the audio for the running sequence I had to utilise the free audio editing software Audacity and its Noise Removal function to minimise the sound of the wind allowing for the foot steps to be heard much clearer. I did this for all three clips in the sequence and I believe that they have been fixed to the best of my abilites without using foley to create the foot steps sound effect.

The final line had similar effects to the running sequence, with a lot of the background noise removed. This was so that when it was imported into Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 and the volume was increased, there was as little background noise as possible. I believe that this worked quite effectively as the line is clearly audible and there is no background buzz.

The gun shot was sourced from this website and I believe that it is a royalty free website as all of the sound effects on it are downloadable and require no payment. While I may be wrong in this assumption, there are so many gun shot sound effects on the internet that I'm sure this one would not be recognised but I would also guess that since it was on the type of website it was that it is completely free. I did have to edit it slightly, removing the noise at the end to make the sound effect sharper and crisper against the silence.

The music for the opening sequence was created by James Cooper specifically for my Thriller.

I asked him if he could do this for me and gave him some rough cues for the major scene changes. At first he sent me two songs, one that was two minutes long and another that was one minute.
intro (scrap the pleasantrys) by Nathanal
Against the Clock by Nathanal
I was overjoyed at these because they had the perfect style and atmosphere to them that I wanted to present in my Thriller. So, I asked him if he could amalgamate them into one song and I gave him all of the scene change cues so that the music would sync up perfectly with the footage.

After some time he got back to me with the next version of the soundtrack.
Rich-113-210 edit by Nathanal
When this was placed into my Thriller it fitted absolutely perfectly and I am glad that I asked James to create the music for me because it fits so well. James says that he still needs to edit it slightly and mess around with the balancing of the instruments, however, I think that it is amazing as it is and I will certainly be impressed if the next version surpasses this one.

Editing the Thriller - The Car Sequence

The final scene in my Thriller takes place in a car and initially the footage showed that of a bright and clear day. For the purpose of my thriller this was far too bright and it had no sense of danger lurking behind it. It simply looked like a sunny day in a car. This was fixed by changing the brightness and contrast settings. The brightness was decreased to -0.25 and the contrast centre was increased to 1.00. This added a different edge to the sequence as it suddenly become a lot more threatening and a lot more stylised. This works brilliantly for the purposes of my Thriller as the lower brightness sets an unnerving tension for the audience in a highly subtle manner.

In the initial plan for this section of my opening sequence I was going to have the data for the first murder appear on screen in white text against a black background a couple of seconds after the gun shot. While this seemed like a feasable idea in the beginning, I eventually realised that there was not enough time to include it and it just looked out of place and pointless. This has lead to me removing that piece from the sequence and just lengthening the shot of the papers a little bit more. In the end, this has made the sequence flow so much better and I am glad that I removed it.

In the scene there was one particularly troubling sequence, in which the character flips the sheet of paper and starts drawing a mind map of the situation. The shot in which the diagram is drawn was far too long and I could not afford to take so long on one shot but I could not cut from an empty sheet of paper to a full diagram. Ergo, I decided to use one of the shots that were not intially in the storyboard to fill in the gap to act as a segway between the empty sheet and the full diagram. This worked until I realised how shaky the shot actually was. As re-shooting this scene is not an option, I simply had to try and use a bit of editing trickery to fix the problem. This was done by stabilising the media and then cropping it to remove the ridiculously obvious signs of the stabilising taking place. While that particular shot still has a slight edited look to it, it is far superior to what I had initially and it works as a perfect segway.

The ending of the scene was incredibly simple to edit together as I simply cut from the close up of the characters eyes to the text showing the title. The font for the title is Leander which was also found on DaFont and was chosen for similar reasons as the credits font. However, it is bolder and larger therefore cutting a more imposing figure against the black background whilst still be easy to read.

Editing the Thriller - The Running Sequence

The second scene of the Thriller is the running sequence. The clips were easy to string together as each angle was filmed separately. Once the clips were placed in the necessary order it became a case of turning day into night. This is standard practise within the industry as most cameras produce grainy or pitch black footage when footage is shot at night, to fix this, most shoots take place during the day and then editing is used to turn it into night. This makes the sequence more enigmatic and make the characters seem in more danger. While these types of shots would be done inside, that is not a possibility for me, ergo, I am having to make do with what I have. Initially the shots looked like the image below and they were quite bright in comparison to how I wanted them but I am grateful that they were cloudier than the first shoot.

Thanks to a great effect on my software I can instantly change the colour curves to the Night Preset and this made a fantastic difference to the visual effect of the shoot. At this point, the shots are not dark enough to suggest the time of midnight, however, there is another effect that I can add to fix this up.
This effect is the Brightness and Contrast where I set the brightness to about -0.12 and increased the contrast centre to 1.00. This was changed slightly on the final two shots of the scene where the brightness was increased slightly to -0.6 so that everything was more easily visible in those shots. At this point, the sky is nowhere near dark enough but I am going to use Adobe After Effects to further darken the sky to make the scene look as if it takes place at midnight.
After finishing off the the initial film I will then focus upon the audio editing of the scene even though I only truly need to fix the tracking shots as the wind is clearly audible and the footsteps are lost within the noise. After that I shall go back and sort out the sky.

Editing the Thriller - The Credits Sequence

Since all of the filming is completed it is now time for me to edit together my opening sequence. As the sequence is made up of three main segments, I felt it best to split my discussion into those three sections so that I would be able to explain each more effectively.

Chronologically, the first segment is the credits with the shots of the moon. These shots were taken during the production of the Preliminary Task as I knew I was going to need them and the skies were perfectly clear at night when I did the shoots. Initially the shots I had gotten were of a horrible quality or far too blurry.

This was fixed on a shoot the subsequent night after I had played around with the camera modes and found that changing the metering mode allowed me to get the moon exactly as I wanted it. The result was the footage that is now in my opening sequence.

To edit my Thriller I have chosen to use Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10 HD Platinum Production Suite because it is a highly capable piece of software that I am much more comfortable using than the overly complicated Adobe Premiere Pro on the College computers. As can be seen in the picture above, all of the footage is imported into the media bank in the corner and then it is a simple drag and drop process with easy cutting because of the S short cut on the keyboard. This allowed me to easily piece together the two clips that I used. Unfortunately, the two clips were not long enough to fill the necessary time frame and so I simply duplicated the clips and reversed them. While this may seem like a lazy technique that is easily noticed, when the shot is solely of the moon and there are credits appearing on screen it really is not noticed in the slightest.

The credits were placed in the same locations as I depicted in my animatic although I had to search for a decent free font that was much more effective than the previous one. To do this I made use of the font website DaFont and after a bit of searching I found the perfect font for the credits: Chonker. The slightly eroded typewriter design to the font adds the sense of tension within the credits but it is also incredibly easy to read and looks much more professional than some of the other fonts that I could have chosen. Overall, all of the credits were chosen to fit the same order that I have previously discovered on Wikipedia and I have utilised my peers' names to make the credits seem more realistic than if I put my name in for everything that I did on the project. Although almost all of the people in the credits have nothing to do with my project, barring myself, Sophie Kish, Martin Smith, Katie Hutchinson and James Cooper, if I did not do this then the credits would look incredibly unprofessional. As a result, the credits are incorrect but they look exactly like a real film's credits.

The Fourth Shoot

After two unmitigated disasters of shoots I am glad that this fourth shoot was a major success. All of the necessary footage was filmed and I am relieved that everything finally worked out the way I needed it to. The weather stayed cloudy and there were very few interruptions barring a number of cars that we successfully avoided.

I nearly had a problem when my camera's battery was nearly out, however, I had already filmed all of the needed footage before this happened and it really did not prevent me from finishing successfully and I guess that this was solely down to luck.

Now that all of the filming is out of the way I can finally get down to editing my Thriller sequence. I have already sourced two of the sound effects and I have someone creating the music for me. This should hopefully speed up the editing process and allow me to finish the first edit quickly so that I can improve it as soon as possible.

The Third Shoot

As with the first shoot, this was a miserable failure. While the acting had improved and the nerves were gone from the actors, there was one thing that got in the way. The shoot started off badly as we had to postpone it by 10 minutes due to the actress having her dinner, so we were already 10 minutes behind and then, the moment it reached 6pm darkness fell and the camera just could not pick up anything when filming. This was a major setback and after multiple attempts to heighten the camera's visibility I decided that I had to stop the shoot and re-organise it for tomorrow between 4 and 5pm. This is because although the overall quality was initially fantastic at the time of this shoot, I did not have enough time to get all of the necessary shots and as such I do not want to repeat such a shoot.

While this is highly annoying I believe that if I can at least get the necessary footage in tomorrow's shoot then even if it is not completely correct I will still have time to create a rough edit and then re-shoot when necessary. However, hopefully this final shoot will be all that is needed to finish off the project successfully.